Hustle Street Guide - Starting Your Business

Before jumping into the marketplace and start offering your products, check out if anyone needs you. No matter how excited you are about your new invention, it is not worth it unless people in the market need it or want it.

Fulfilling market needs does not necessarily mean offering new products; it may simply mean selling an existing product in a different manner. This may entail changing the way the product is packaged, distributed, or even branded.

A niche refers to a specific segment of the market with unique needs. For example, when you researched on the market needs, you probably found out that some people wanted cheaper products; others wanted better quality products, while others were more interested in the availability of after-sale services.

Each of these groups represents a specific niche that you can offer your services to. It can be very tempting to portray yourself as the one-stop-shop able to solve all these problems. Do not succumb. You cannot be a jack-of-all-trades and expect to go far. In addition to this, you are more likely to get more money if people perceive you to be a specialist able to deal with their unique problem. If you had a heart problem, you would rather see a cardiologist than seeing a general practitioner.

Becoming a specialist in your niche may take more time and effort, but it also means that you have fewer people to compete with.

Once you have identified what your market needs and which segment of the market you will serve, it is time to be clear on what YOU want.

What are you expecting out of the whole deal? How soon do you expect to make your first dollar? What are your goals and objectives?

This is the best time to write your business plan. It does not have to be an 80-page document for it to qualify to be a business plan. And it doesn’t need to read as if it was written by a university professor either. You simply need to tell how you intend to make money with your business idea.

You’ve identified your niche and set your targets; it’s time to get good. No matter how much hype your launching event will carry, a bogus product will always fall through. You must gather all the skills you have to develop a good product and to present it as the best solution to your customer’s problem. I don’t mean that you should spend all you life “perfecting your product before the launch.” No. Just put in place a basic system that will fulfill the product’s claims, enable learning, sustain growth, increase revenue, and cut down unnecessary losses. The rest can be developed with time.

Taking time to set up systems will save you many resources in future. Hire an accountant if you can and understand you market perfectly. Know your product and know the market. It will be so awkward if a client happens to know more than you do in an area where you are the “guru.”

Selecting a perfect niche is good and so is having a great product. But all these will be useless if people don’t know that you exist. There are thousands of products scrambling for attention of your potential clients; do not expect clients coming to knock on your door. People must know that your product does exist.

Now, I’m assuming that you don’t have a marketing budget running into hundreds of thousands of dollars. If this is the case with, you don’t have a choice but to do a lot of the marketing yourself. This may sound like a very tedious task but it is worth it. It is your duty to tell people that you have a great product. This may mean cold calling, going to trade shows, distributing flyers and all that.

It is always amazing to see the number of people who go into business to make money, but don’t behave like that is their job. Making money should be your conscious step and using it prudently even more important. There is no glory in being known as a businessperson if you have no money.

Develop systems that will increase your sales, double your profits, and reduce the cost that you make. Look into the areas of making and loosing money such as closing deals, credit policy, establishing repeat clients, etc.

After spending a couple of weeks or months in business, you may start noticing a few problems with your earlier game plan. When you do, switch. Go through the various processes that you went through as you started out:

What were your goals? Did you achieve them? If not, why?

Get rid of inefficiency in the moneymaking chain. For example, you may be having a sales conversion rate of 8 percent. Instead of trying to make more sales presentations, why can’t you try to increase the effectiveness of each presentation and increase your conversion rate to 16%? This may actualy mean doing less work and saving on costs in addition to adding revenue.